Look Who it Was Random video

It’s Java Jim, But Not As We Know It by Simon Ritter

1,310 views · Published 10 November 2016 · 15:51 · Indexed 29 October 2026

Channel: Devoxx · 2016 · Science & Technology

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One of the big new features in JDK 8, as we all know, was Lambda expressions. This gave us a much simpler way to represent an anonymous function without all the boilerplate code of inner classes.

The origins of Lambda expressions go back eighty years, well before Java (and even modern computing) started and is based on the work of Alonso Church, who created Lambda calculus as a mathematical model of computation.

In this session, we’ll explore how using only one new functional interface and a small library to display results in a more readable form we can solve (in theory) any problem using only Lambda expressions. This really is Java, but most of it won’t look like any code you’ve ever seen before. Be prepared for some mind-bending use of Lambda expressions!

Simon Ritter is the Deputy CTO of Azul Systems. Simon has been in the IT business since 1984 and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Brunel University in the U.K.

Simon joined Sun Microsystems in 1996 and spent time working in both Java development and consultancy. He has been presenting Java technologies to developers since 1999 focusing on the core Java platform as well as client and embedded applications. Now at Azul Systems he continues to help people understand Java and Azul’s JVM products.

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